Houses are temporarily reinforced in the face of erosion on the banks of the Cai Con River in Mai Dam town of Chau Thanh district, the Mekong Delta province of Hau Giang (Photo: VNA)Can Tho (VNA) –Representatives from member countries of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) sharedtheir experiences in coping with climate change on June 19, part of the ASEM Conferenceon Climate Action to Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals - Ways Forwardin Can Tho city.
Filip Kusmierski, an expert on climatechange policy of the Polish Ministry of Environment, said to deal with climatechange, the key solution is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into theenvironment through projects on researching, developing and promoting the useof clean energy like solar, wind and geothermal energy.
At the conference, Poland introduced aproject on improving governments’ and relevant sides’ capacity of collecting,managing, analyzing and using data of the energy sector to serve the making ofdecisions and the building of action plans on green growth in developingcities.
Another solution to curb greenhouse gasemissions is to boost the sustainable use and resilience of agricultural landresources, according to Diji Chandrasekharan Behr, a senior natural resourceeconomist at the World Bank Group.
She said recent studies found thatagricultural land degradation has become increasingly popular in many ASEMeconomies, including Vietnam where more than 50 percent of the natural landarea nationwide faces the risk of erosion, threatening ecological balance andeconomic development.
The economist highlighted the necessityto use advanced technologies to survey the degradation situation and assessclimate change impacts on agricultural land and land use changes so as to buildsolutions to effectively and sustainably use agricultural land resources ineach region.
Meanwhile, Robbert Moree, a strategicadvisor at the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, presentedan effective solution to respond to the sea level rise which is “Building withNature” that makes use of natural sand to reinforce beaches.
He said the Netherlands will sharesolutions to the sea level rise with cities in deltas around the world,including the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho.
Elaine Joyce Borejon, from the ClimateChange Commission of the Philippines, said the Philippines is also one of thecountries particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, especially the sealevel rise.
The Philippines has built climatechange and sea level rise scenarios which serve as a basis for ministries,sectors and localities to take actions, she said, adding that the country hasalso made climate risk assessments for each region to devise suitable responseplans.
Countries should combine climate changeresponse in their development policies, she added.
Vietnam is assessed as one of thecountries hardest hit by climate change. In particular, the Mekong Delta regionis one of the three deltas in the world most vulnerable to sea level rise,together with the Nile River Delta in Egypt and the Ganges River Delta inBangladesh.
The ASEM Conference on Climate Action to Achieving the Sustainable DevelopmentGoals - Ways Forward is one of the most important inter-regional events onclimate change and the only one of ASEM 2018 hosted by Vietnam. It is aninitiative of Vietnam which was approved at the 13th ASEM Ministerial Meetinglast November in Myanmar and won support and sponsorship from manycountries.-VNA
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